Mike Westbrook: Glad Day Live

Rating: ★★★★

Record and Artist Details

Musicians:

Billy Thompson (vn)
Phil Minton (v)
Kate Westbrook (v)
Steve Berry (b)
Mike Westbrook (elec p, cond)
Karen Street (accordion)

Label:

Meantime Records

April/2014

Catalogue Number:

MR20

RecordDate:

9 September 2008

A wiser man than I cited Westbrook's setting of Blake's poems as one of Brit jazz's greatest works. Originally developed as Tyger, Adrian Mitchell's musical about Blake, it in turn morphed into Glad Day, a TV musical drama. Created in pre-Thatcher, pre-crash days, it seemed a celebratory work of hope. Innocence even. But experience now re-casts it as a warning and heartfelt cry of passion. Blake's outcries against enslavement, child exploitation, spiritual and economic oppression demand an audience now more than ever. Which all adds to the poignancy of this CD of a live recording paired with a DVD of the performance. The performance's unremitting intensity is beautifully caught by director Paul Ayres, mixing tight close ups with occasional wide shots of the choir. The black backdrop, with the band all in black but picked out by bright spotlights, sounds austere but it points up the battle between light and dark so central to these songs. The choir's youth, in angelic contrast to the band's embodied experience, is fantastic: like a theatre chorus they guide our emotion as they witness with awe Thompson's ecstatic anger on ‘Let The Slave’ or Street's lyric melancholy on ‘Holy Thursday’. In a world that puts a price on everything, this music, this vision remains priceless.

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